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Politics & Government

Managing public operations

As governor, New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart says she would establish property tax reform, trim the work force, enact zero-based budgeting

Scott Benjamin, Community Contributor

Posted Sat, Jul 5, 2025 at 5:54 pm ET|Updated Sun, Aug 17, 2025 at 9:34 am ET

By Scott Benjamin

NEW BRITAIN – Erin Stewart takes a seat at Café Busy Bean, downtown in the Hardware City.

“Did you talk to Danny Salerno?” she asks a visiting reporter.

Find out what's happening in Brookfieldfor free with the latest updates from Patch.

He did.

[Campaign aide] Brock [Weber] said you wanted someone familiar with my career.”

Find out what's happening in Brookfieldfor free with the latest updates from Patch.

“I asked, ‘Who did you give him?’ And Brock said it was Danny. I said, ‘Oh gosh, they probably were on the phone for hours.’ ”

The interview with informative - crisp, clean, quick - 25 minutes.

“You got rid of him that fast,” she says with a laugh.

Salerno was her youth softball coach, but there was no discussion as to why she never played in the College World Series.

Also, there was no dialogue with Salerno about her exploratory campaign toward being elected in 2026 as Connecticut’s 90th governor. Or any contrast of her career and that of her father, Tim Stewart, who was mayor of New Britain for four, two-year terms, departing in 2011.

It was all related to municipal operations in the city where Democratic former Gov. Abraham Ribicoff grew up, and where Republican Thomas Meskill served as mayor before he was elected governor.

Salerno is now the city treasurer and before that, was elected as the majority leader of the Common Council when Stewart, now 38, initially became mayor – around the time that Vanna White made her debut on Wheel of Fortune.

Stewart remarked, “Danny is as liberal a Democrat as they come.”

Apparently, it helps to have support from the opposition party when you are a Republican in a city of 80,000 people and the Democrats outnumber the GOP voters four to one.

Salerno said New Britain has a “97 percent question.”

He remarked, “97 percent of our property is already developed.”

People move from Long Island to a Connecticut suburb and are astonished that the houses in the Nutmeg State are further apart.

Said Stewart, “In New Britain we literally live on top of each other.”

Salerno said, “It is very difficult for us to expand like many of the smaller communities. We have to be innovative in how we do economic development.”

Southern Connecticut State University associate professor of Political Science and Urban Affairs Jonathan Wharton said, “When they put out proposals for the CTFastTrack bus station, she was the first mayor that jumped on it because she knew it would boost the local economy.”

Salerno said the city also has a ”48 percent question.”

He commented, “48 percent of the property in New Britain is tax-exempt. That is an astounding number. Cities are going to be in trouble if they don’t get some other forms of revenue at the local level.”

Stewart remarked, “I say this to people when we discuss our city budget: We are on welfare ourselves. If we don’t have the subsidies coming from the state, we wouldn’t be able to pay for our government as it functions currently. A lot of that is because of non-taxable property and the exemptions that they make for everything.”

There is, among other parcels, the state court house, Central Connecticut State University and Charter Oak State College.

Salerno said even if you subtract the public schools and city hall, the tax-exempt properties still amount to “36 to 38” percent of the land.

Stewart explained, “When your urban areas become hubs of social communities – which is what makes cities, cities – but at the same time when the state tells you they’re going to reimburse you in terms of pilot dollars for the amount of tax-exempt dollars that you have and you only receive not even half of what you are supposed to get, it makes it only more difficult. But we make it work.”

She said that the municipal property tax is “one of the most regressive taxes that we have. But it is the only option for our municipalities to collect revenue.”

“Everything else we collect is a pass-through to the state,” remarked Stewart.

The sales tax revenue goes to the state and not to the municipality.

“Everybody is comparing our tax mill rate to the surrounding towns,” remarked Stewart. “When you are comparing New Britain’s tax rate to Newington or Plainville or other smaller suburban areas to what we are here, it is incredibly hard to compete with those neighboring towns because of just the fewer services that they don’t have to pay for that we do have to pay for to accommodate the 80,000 people that you have living here.”

State Comptroller Sean Scanlon (D-Guilford) told Patch.com in 2023 that property tax reform “is the third rail of Connecticut politics. We have 169 fiefdoms in Connecticut. Everyone loves their town, and I certainly love the town I live in. If you look at any other state in America, you see it is a very inefficient way to govern.”

Stewart commented, “We have this system that has been created in the state of Connecticut that we have created ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’ We have created those communities”

“You are either well-off or you are so far below the poverty line that you are relying on the state government to help you function,” she said.

The urgent need for property tax reform: Wasn’t that the Junior Achievement Lean Canvass one-page business plan that former Middletown Mayor Dan Drew presented eight years ago when he was seeking the Democratic nomination for governor?

Stewart lamented, “I think we’ve been talking about property tax reform for decades now.”

Is there reason to think it may be enacted soon?

“I think there is now more interest than ever, because of how high the cost of living has become,” Stewart said. “I think you have a lot of interest from mayors and first selectpersons to look at the property tax system and come up with reasonable solutions on how we can make it more equitable throughout the state.”

Stewart, who is on the Board of Directors for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM), said it has “a good plan” that calls for, among other things, fully funding the pilot programs and fully funding special education costs in the school districts.

“You need to get the money directly into the hands of the municipalities that need them,” Stewart commented. “Your municipalities know how to do it best.”

Turku Varadarajan, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in The Wall Street Journal earlier this year that Bronx Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres is more interested in running for governor of New York state than for mayor of New York City.

Torres said, “The mayor is at the mercy of the state Legislature and the governor. The mayor of New York cannot even install speed cameras without the authorization of Albany.”

Torres commented that, “to have a systemic impact in improving the lives of New Yorkers, you have to be governor, because that’s where the power lies.”

Is that also the case in Connecticut?

Stewart remarked, “To an extent I would say that is accurate. One of the reasons I said that I wanted to run for governor is that all of the things I have wanted to do locally, I have done.”

“My impediment now is that every time I want to go to the next level, there is some type of state law that is prohibiting it or something at the state level that is holding it up,” she explained. “Or there are problems with the state in general with the state not answering phone calls or not being responsive when we have projects to get done. No one sometimes is answering their phones because they still work from their basements [as became the case during the pandemic]. It’s very, very frustrating.”

“There are abilities to make change,” she asserted. “You can make your own change. I have had a good relationship with commissioners and governors and have been able to get things done.”

State legislators from both parties have said the biggest concern they hear from constituents is to make Connecticut more affordable.

The state Senate Republicans have stated that the state employees have received a combined 33 percent increase in pay through wage boosts and bonus programs over the last six years. They’ve called for a two-year wage freeze.

State Senate Republican Leader Stephen Harding (R-30) of Brookfield has said that Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) needs to be "a good negotiator for the taxpayers" as the new contract is developed.

Stewart noted that she was a state employee and her mother worked in the state Department of Transportation.

Krisitin Hussey wrote in The New York Times that Stewart’s great-uncle, Dominic Badolato, was a longtime Democratic labor leader.

Commented Stewart, “I don’t know that the issue is about freezing wages, because: Is it about freezing wages or it about how many state employees do you have working and are we getting the job done?”

CT Hearst columnist Dan Haar has reported that during Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy’s tenure – 2011 to 2019 - the state’s full-time work force was trimmed by 13.1 percent.

Can it be slashed further?

“Absolutely. I do believe that,” said Stewart. “I can’t tell you where at the moment.”

Can it mostly be done through attrition?

“I believe in that 110 percent,” Stewart related.

“One of the first things I did [as mayor] was an analysis of our work force,” she commented. “You do it slowly and methodically. How do you right-size your departments.”

“You just can’t say that we’ll reduce the work force through attrition and not look at the long-term impact,” Stewart explained.

She said in New Britain she turned 16 municipal departments into eight or nine departments.

Salerno said, “Our work force in almost every department is less than it once was.”

He underscored that alterations needed to be made since Stewart entered office in 2013 facing “$30 million in debt” from the previous Democratic administration.

In a 2022 statement, Stewart wrote, "I had to get comfortable with the idea that, if I did my job the right way, it might very well mean that I was a one-term mayor."

Salerno commented, “Her ability to persuade people and say this is what is best for the city has been profound.”

New Britain’s bond rating was upgraded to ‘A’ earlier this year. The fund balance account and the pension payments for the municipal employees have increased.

Scanlon said in an interview with John Dankosky of CT Mirror that the state should implement zero-based budgeting.

Can that be accomplished in such a massive budget?

“Yes,” Stewart said.

Would it be easy?

“No,” she commented.

“When I started here [as mayor], I said that, 'You are going to have to justify every dollar that you spend,' ” she explained. “That is a scary reality for people. It would take a governor with the courage to build an honest budget from the ground up and question every line item. Legislators will tell you 90 percent of the budget is baked before anyone has a shot at it.”

Stewart added, “But I think having a disruptor in that budget process with a zero-based budgeting process will really be an exercise where a lot of managers for the state would very quickly see that they have a lot of extras in their budget. You will not know that unless you start from zero and start building and justifying every dollar that is spent. I would welcome that.”

She said she supports the state Senate Republicans' call for the establishment an Office of Inspector General with forensic auditors to reduce waste in state government.

“It is absolutely a worthy thing to look at,” said Stewart. Former state Senate Republican Leader John McKinney of Fairfield embraced that proposal more than a decade ago.

She said that she supports the fiscal guardrails that were enacted in 2017 in which surplus money is directed toward the rainy day fund and paying down a large state employee pension debt, which mostly occurred between 1939 and 2010.

“Also, what happened to the debt diet?” Stewart remarked, making reference to Lamont’s call during his first term to trim bond appropriations.

Some legislators have said the governor has been more cautious in that department than Malloy, his immediate predecessor.

So if you analyze the scorecard, Stewart wants to trim spending, but she appears to be going against the grain of the GOP state senators in not calling for a two-year wage freeze on the state employees.

Wharton said, “I’m not surprised. That’s the way she always has been. She isn’t necessarily in synch with everything the legislative Republicans support.”

Matt Grimes, a former candidate for first selectman in Brookfield who has known Stewart for almost 20 years, said, “She has never had to change who she is. She never thought that she was infallible because she is the mayor.”

On another topic, Stewart lamented that Connecticut has the second highest electricity rates in the country. The same position it was in 15 years ago when Malloy, the former Stamford mayor, was on his way to the first of two terms as governor.

She said the state needs to expand its natural gas and nuclear energy supply, and as a result of a memorandum sent to Republican President Donald Trump she met earlier this year with some of his energy advisors.

Stewart said that she “advocated for expansion of natural gas, accessing the current natural gas pipeline that runs through Brookfield, and exploring ways to get Millstone [the nuclear facility] operating at a higher capacity.”

The Hartford Courant has stated that Connecticut is “an export-dependent state.”

Will Trump’s trade tariffs hurt the state’s economy?

Stewart said it is a negotiating tool.

” I think it will cost some industries more in the long run,” she commented. ”However, I do agree with having a level playing field [with China and other major trade partners]. I think it is short-term pain for long-term gain. I don’t think the tariffs will put anybody out of business in Connecticut, per se.”

Connecticut’s minimum wage has increased more than $6 an hour in eight years, currently sitting at $16.35 per hour. Is that the appropriate figure?

“$16.35 sounds great,” Stewart said. “You have to look at everything else that has doubled over the years too.”

“Is it enough?” she said. “I don’t know.”

Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal columnist, has said that chief elected officials should try to be like an artist and enact a sweeping project with some bipartisan support. Otherwise it probably will always be controversial.

What sweeping thing would Stewart do if she becomes governor?

“We have done nothing with building up our data-center capacity in the state of Connecticut,” she declared. “Businesses need to be in close-proximity to where the [data] cloud is. We have done nothing except become an impediment for all these high-tech jobs because we’re not willing to embrace what it takes to make date-centers possible.”

Five years ago, University of Connecticut Business professor Fred Carstensen told Patch.com, “Neighboring states – Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York – have well-developed digital technology data storage systems. “Connecticut doesn’t have that. It is about the equivalent of driving along I-95 with no exits to go to,.

Said Stewart, “I have a site in which I went as far as I can go with Stanley Black & Decker [in New Britain] in developing a partnership. I went as far as I could because no firm wants to come into this state because of our energy costs.”

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, author Scott Johnston wrote that, “It’s time to lower the drinking age” from 21 to 18.

He stated that since “Congress established a federal drinking age of 21 in 1984 . . . the rate of drunk-driving deaths has dropped almost 50 percent . . drivers of all ages have responded to much tougher enforcement and severely increased penalties.”

Stewart said that she disagrees.

“Alcoholism is one of my number one problems here in the city,” she remarked. “Everything is driven by alcoholism. The emergency response all the time for people who are basically drinking themselves to death.”

The last time the GOP captured a gubernatorial election, Conan was still doing Late Night on NBC.

It is likely that Lamont will seek a third term. He captured about 56 percent of the vote in 2022 However, Wharton said he may have become more vulnerable because of “consternation” from progressive Democratic legislators over his recent veto of wide-ranging housing bill.

Since launching her exploratory committee on January 28, Stewart said she has raised more than $255,000, about $1,600 a day.

“We have almost 1,500 unique donors,” Stewart said.

Supporters have opened their homes for fund-raising receptions since last winter.

Her goal is to get to $350,000 by October, qualify for a Citizen Election Program grant and then be able to devote considerable time to meeting with prospective Republican convention delegates after she steps down in mid-November after 12 years as mayor.

Ten years ago Hussey of The New York Times wrote that Stewart was then living in an apartment with a roommate and furniture taken from her" "parents’ basement." Now she is married with two children.

She initially sought the GOP gubernatorial nomination seven years ago and then switched to the race for the nomination for lieutenant governor. She placed second in a three-way primary.

“You can’t try to do both,” she said of serving as mayor and running for statewide office. “I learned from what happened in 2018.”

It may be a wise decision for another reason. No sitting mayor has been elected governor in Connecticut since Morgan Bulkeley of Hartford in 1888.

The only candidate to formally enter the race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination is Westport First Selectman Jen Tooker, who also opted not to run for another term in the November 4 municipal elections.

Haar of CT Hearst recently reported that state Sen. Ryan Fazio (R-36) of Greenwich is considering a bid.

Harding said Fazio has been particularly effective on fiscal and energy issues.

However, the last sitting state legislator to capture a major party nomination for governor was state Rep. Julie Belaga (R-136) of Westport in 1986.

Harding said, “I would give Mayor Stewart a leg up and Sen. Fazio a leg up as far as favorites. I expect one of the two of them will be the nominee.”

Wharton, a former chairman of the New Haven Republican Town Committee, said Stewart has the best odds of winning.

He commented, “She has already done fundraising and has been meeting voters. She would have a head start on Fazio. She has a presence from meeting people from around the state when she made her run for lieutenant governor in 2018. She has an impressive social-media presence.”

Republican former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and GOP consultant Alex Castellanos have stated that the best candidates are the ones that appeal to both the head and the heart.

Wharton said Stewart fits that description.

“She is constantly shopping around to find out what works and what doesn’t work,” he remarked. "She is the student who will always be inquisitive. Yet, she also is a retail politician.”

Longtime Republican Stat Central Committee member John Morris of Litchfield said, “She is a mother and she is young and energetic. We haven’t seen a candidate like Erin in a long time.”

Sacred Heart University Professor of Politics and Scholar in Residence Gary Rose wrote a book in 2023 on Connecticut’s Republican Party, stating, "Seriously how long does it take for the Republican Party to realize that running multi-millionaire candidates with minimal or no public service experience is not a winning formula?" That was a reference to Tom Foley of Greenwich, who carried the GOP banner in the 2010 and 2014 gubernatorial elections, and Bob Stefanowski of Madison, who was the Republican nominee in 2018 and 2022.

He said Stewart, the mayor of the state’s eighth largest city, is the kind of candidate that the GOP needs to consider for its gubernatorial nomination..

Rose added, “I think Erin could do well among Millennials and Generation Z. Those voters represent a frustrated bloc who don’t feel the system has served them well.”

However, Rose said he also has spoken with Republican women who “had reservations about her. They said there is a little too much hype and not enough substance.”

Who is the greatest football player to come out of Connecticut: Steve Young or Tebucky Jones?

“If I don’t say Tebucky, I will be in trouble here.” Stewart said after 3.5 seconds of laughter.

Jones, then a running back, was considered the best in the state his senior year, 1992, at New Britain High School. Coming out of high school, he was probably more heralded than Young, who played quarterback at Greenwich High School in the late 1970s.

However, in college, Young, was second in the Heisman Trophy balloting in 1983 and is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

If you can occasionally go against the grain of your own party, then why can’t you differ with the New Britain gridiron fans?

“I have to say Tebucky,” Stewart asserted with a smile.

Voters living in Stamford, West Haven and New Haven, respectively, would contend that Andy Robustelli, Ken Strong and Floyd Little should be part of the conversation.

When Young’s memoir was published in 2015 he returned to Greenwich High School and Ken Borsuk of the Greenwich Time wrote that Young said that “even as he pursued football stardom, he attended law school to make sure he could support his family.”

Stewart is a member of the Board of Regents (BOR) for Higher Education. Utilizing Young’s concept of having a back-up plan, should the students at the four-year schools in the system – Central, Easter, Southern and Western – have to complete a double-major to graduate.

Stewart remarked, “It certainly would make every student that graduates from the system more marketable, but I don’t think it would be feasible at this point with the current structure of the system itself. We’re still trying to figure out how make the [2011] merger work. I think to push any massive change on the system now would absolutely overload it.”

She said one of the BOR’s chief goals is to make more online classes available.

Stewart commented that the resistance to more online offerings is “historically driven by the teachers’ unions.”

“However, that is crippling our students, because there are so many that have to work and can’t go full-time," she explained. "Having the on-line option and having it be flexible is absolutely necessary for today’s realities”

Stewart initially majored in Pharmacy at the University of Connecticut

She transferred to Central Connecticut State University so she could be an intern for U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-5) of New Britain. That led to an internship for Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R-Brookfield) and then a job as a legislative aide in the state Senate.

“I tell everyone that [graduating from Central] was the best decision that I ever made,” Stewart commented. “I was making a lot of connections that helped propel my interest in politics forward.”

“Most of what I learned was practical knowledge and it came from the internships that I had,” said Stewart, who more recently earned a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of New Haven.

One of her favorite professors at Central, where she majored in Public Administration and minored in Communications, was Tony Milano, who was the secretary of the Office of Policy & Management (budget director) under former Govs. Ella Grasso (D-Windsor Locks) and William O’Neill (D-East Hampton).

Said Stewart: “He taught from real-life experience.”

“There is no book or no class that teaches you how to be mayor or how to be governor,” she remarked. “It is the intangibles that you learn along the way, the people you meet and the stories that you hear.”

Resources:

Interview with Erin Stewart, Patch.com, on Monday, June 30, 2025.

E-mail interview with Erin Stewart, Patch.com, on Wednesday, July 2, 2025.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/05/nyregion/at-27-balancing-her-social-life-and-a-citys-budget.html

https://www.courant.com/2004/0...

https://patch.com/connecticut/...

Phone interview with Matt Grimes, Patch.com, on Sunday, March 2, 2025.

Phone interview with Jonathan Wharton, Patch.com on Friday, March 7, 2025.

E-mail interview with Jonathan Wharton, Patch.com, on Monday, March 10, 2025.

Phone interview with Jonathan Wharton, Patch.com, on Wednesday, July 2, 2025.

Phone interview with John Morris, Patch.com, on Tuesday, March 11, 2025.

Phone interview with Matt Corey, Patch.com, on Tuesday, March 11, 2025.